NYAD (2023)
Directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi
Partly — NYAD is somewhat woke, scoring 45 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
Here is a film that hands a major studio release to two actresses in their sixties and asks them to carry it across open water.
Consciousness Markers
The entire premise is a 60-year-old woman defying ageist and sexist dismissal to conquer a male-dominated endurance sport, with an explicit 'never too old' thesis and a woman-centered support dynamic.
Protagonist Diana Nyad is openly gay and the film depicts her decades-long bond with former partner Bonnie Stoll, making queerness integral to the emotional core rather than a throwaway detail.
The film is built around two women in their sixties (Bening, Foster) carrying a major studio release, an unusual act of age-and-gender-forward casting, with a supporting cast that includes Asian American and Latino performers in functional roles.
The closing press-conference platitudes ('never give up,' 'never too old') and inspirational-biopic structure carry mild sermonizing, but the film largely lets the performances do the talking rather than preaching.
The film celebrates an aging, weathered body enduring extreme physical strain, but frames this as athletic grit rather than a body-acceptance message.
The film smooths over documented controversies (unratified record, disputed English Channel swim, omitted embellishments) into a heroic arc, though it does not recast history through a modern ideological lens.
The cast is multiracial but race is never a subject of the narrative; Jeena Yi's jellyfish expert and Marcos Diaz's crew role exist without commentary.
No environmental or climate themes appear; the ocean is a physical adversary, not a political one.
No critique of wealth, class, or economic systems; the film is a straightforward inspirational sports narrative.
No neurodivergent characters or themes are present.
Why it received this score
Here is a film that hands a major studio release to two actresses in their sixties and asks them to carry it across open water. That casting choice is the quiet radicalism underneath the whole enterprise, and it pays off in the performances, which are the only part of this production operating at full power. Annette Bening submits her body to genuine physical transformation. Jodie Foster, as the exasperated friend and former partner Bonnie Stoll, gets the better lines and the better instincts. When they share a scene, the film briefly forgets that it is a sports biopic.
The queerness at the center arrives without ceremony. Diana is gay, Bonnie is her former partner, and their decades of intimacy form the emotional spine without demanding a coming-out arc or a teachable moment. The thesis is stated plainly: a sixty-year-old woman refuses the ageist dismissal of the endurance swimming establishment and does the thing anyway. The body on display is weathered, sun-scorched, and pushed past reasonable limits, though the film treats this as athletic grit, not a statement about self-acceptance. The supporting crew is multiracial and nobody remarks on it, which remains the correct way to handle such things.
Where the film sags is its handling of the record itself. The unratified crossing, the English Channel time that never happened, the shark that never surfaced: all smoothed into a triumphant arc. The closing press conference offers three tidy platitudes about never giving up and never being too old. It is mild sermonizing, delivered with a straight face. A thornier film lives inside this one, and it never gets wet.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
Athlete Diana Nyad sets out at 60 to achieve a nearly impossible lifelong dream: to swim from Cuba to Florida across more than 100 miles of open ocean.
Questions about NYAD
Is NYAD woke?
Partly — NYAD is somewhat woke, scoring 45 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Woke-Adjacent.
What makes NYAD woke?
3 of the 10 markers register at 30 or above, led by Feminist Agenda (66), LGBTQ+ Themes (58) and Representation Casting (52). On Feminist Agenda: The entire premise is a 60-year-old woman defying ageist and sexist dismissal to conquer a male-dominated endurance sport, with an explicit 'never too old' thesis and a woman-centered support dynamic.
How does NYAD compare to other 2023 movies?
It ranks #35 of the 200 films from 2023 we've scored; their average is 24. The wokest is Origin (84).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.